


Medicine

by cosima_phdhaus



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Break Up, F/F, Light Angst, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3713437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosima_phdhaus/pseuds/cosima_phdhaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An angst-ridden one-shot of Cosima post-break up, set to Medicine by Daughter. #sorrynotsorry</p>
            </blockquote>





	Medicine

Pick it up, pick it all up.   
And start again.   
You've got a second chance,   
you could go home.   
Escape it all.   
It's just irrelevant. 

Cosima found herself curled up in the corner of the light colored sofa, the shades of Felix's rug blurring as tears, hot and still fresh despite the long hours between Delphine's departure and the current moment, impeded the connection between the sharp lines, her thick lenses, and her ever observant pupils. The blanket she'd spent what felt like years suffocated beneath was discarded, her temperature hovering around where it ought to have been all this time. Despite that, she clutched her sweater more closely to her chest, her lungs heaving, not from over exertion or polyps or blood clogging her trachea, but from the sheer exhaustion of trying to calm her shaking limbs. She should have been grateful that her hypothalamus was cooperating. She should have been relieved that her lungs were at the very least trying. She should have been thankful that her legs and arms and hands, for once, were not shaking because her neurons were misfiring, but none of those feelings rushed through her. She felt frustration, because her hypothalamus was also keeping her awake at night and sending shockwaves of want through her each time blonde hair was in her periphery. She felt pure rage filtering through her bronchioles because her gasping breaths were all in reaction to a few simple sentences falling off of a skilled tongue. She stewed in a state of anxiety, knowing with clarity that she could leave but unable to gather her feet beneath her and pack her things.  

It's just medicine.   
It's just medicine.

Even if she left, the guilt would hover over her, wondering if in her absence, Alison had turned to the bottles of vodka in plain sight across the floor plan of Felix's loft. She would ask herself, as she lay awake in bed, if Sarah was awake as well, with only the brick walls of this room holding her up, because Kira had been stolen from her once again, after only just ensuring her daughter's safety. She would dream up a thousand ways that Helena could be tortured, each one more horrifying than the last. Worst than all of that though, she would still reach in the recesses of her mind, imagining Delphine alone and in an office at Dyad with no one to pull her back from the brink of something unforgivable, and the idea that that of all things would filter through her synapses cut her to the core. The idea that Delphine could still meander her way into Cosima's thoughts when there were so many more important things, more important people (people who hadn't left her, no matter how many times she'd told them to) to focus on was a terrifying one.   

You could still be, what you want to,   
What you said you were, when I met you.

But then again, she was always there. Every time Cosima's eyelids flickered shut, she saw a nude bra and dark blue underwear, encircled by constellations of freckles. Every time she slipped beneath the sheets with Felix snoring softly next to her, Delphine's voice filtered through her ears.    
  
 _Enchantee.  
After a jogging like this, we like to smoke a nice little cigarette.    
I can't stop thinking about that kiss.    
You can trust me.    
And I just want to make crazy science with you.   
Oh, pauvre petit chou.    
Je t'aime.   
Then I love all of you.   
Don't be afraid. I will never leave you.  _  
  
But now, the words weren't so sweet. They were harsh, punctuated with gasped sobs and accentuated with wrenched emotion like she'd never seen from her girlfriend.    
  
 _I’m keeping your promise to love you and your sisters equally._  
But to do that, I can’t do this.   
  
It still ripped at her cardiac muscles each time those words whispered through her mind. They settled into her bones, wove themselves around her tendons, and tripped over her frayed, battle-worn, singed-by-fire nerves. She had more than a basic grasp of physics, and was well aware that the higher an object was, the more painful, the more destructive, the more completely and utterly crushing the fall. She knew that, logically, but it seemed that far too often, particularly where Delphine was concerned, her brain and her heart crossed wires, and her emotions became her driving force.  

You've got a warm heart, you've got a beautiful brain.   
But it's disintegrating, from all the medicine.

Cosima knew so much, but that didn't keep her from playing out different ways their story could have unfolded - a litany of what ifs that kept her occupied in the earliest hours of the morning. What if Delphine weren't her monitor? What if Delphine hadn't gone behind her back? What if Cosima hadn't built that extinguisher, doing who knows what damage to someone who was, despite the animosity between them, her sister? What if Delphine weren't so ambitious? What if Cosima had asked too much of her? What if, what if, what if. 

You could still be, what you want to be,   
What you said you were, when you met me.  

But it wasn't fair to either of them, and she knew that just as well. So rather than fight those what ifs, she pulled her sweater more closely to her body, half-listening to Kira's giggles from the fort they had built, to the rush of traffic outside, to Felix fighting with Sarah over her next move. She did what she'd learned Rachel had done so often. She rewound the memories, and brought herself back to the very beginning, when she was just a PhD student researching her own biology to try and save someone she never had the chance to meet. She went back to when Cormier was replaced with Beraud, when everything seemed infinitely lighter, when there wasn't a body count lying in the wake of destruction she and her sisters had caused. She went back to a time before second and third sets of clones, before planes pulled those closest to her heart to other countries without their consent, before the color she was most familiar with was crimson. She went back to Minnesota, back to a forgotten transcript, and back to a hushed phone call.  

Until Delphine could dedicate herself as much to Cosima as she did to her work, Cosima would go back to enchantee.  

You could still be, what you want to.   
What you said you were, when I met you.   
when you met me. when I met you.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me to yell at me at cosima-phdhaus.tumblr.com.


End file.
